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Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Chair of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Europe.

Minister Bildt writes in "Europe's crisis in Ukraine" that "Ukraine’s crisis is a European crisis". Ukraine is in a political crisis and the EU had had an economic crisis. Mr. Bildt has no doubt overrated the impact the Ukrainian crisis has on Europe.
Pro-European protesters in Ukraine seek "a closer relationship with the EU". They want to live in a law-based country, not governed by a bunch of oligarchic grifters, who enrich themselves through corruption.
The EU had had an eurocrisis. For a while doomsayers had predicted the end of the single currency. In recent months it has been quiet in countries, that needed a bailout. Recently there are signs of an economic recovery.
No doubt Ukraine is now a battleground for the EU and Russia, vying for influence. Should an agreement not be reached between Moscow and Brussels, the country might see a partition. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken by telephone. They both agreed on preserving Ukraine's territorial integrity.
The newly appointed interim president, Olexander Turchynov, said the country would move closer to Europe. Many young people in the Russian-speaking Ukraine also support the grassroots movement in Kiev. The problem there is not the East/West divide, but the generation gap. Indeed it is not easy to resolve the crisis in Ukraine without division. It can be avoided and much depends on Putin. He has a chance to display statesmanship instead of playing brinkmaship.

The problem we observe through the Ukrainian example is a global problem, as anything else that happens today.
Although we keep talking about an interconnected and interdependent human system, we mention "global village", when it comes to calculations, decision making we still base everything on the previous, isolated, fragmented paradigm, pushing everything through self-centered and subjective calculations, always putting our own individual or national interest as priority.
On this same website today we can read about how China ignores its neighbors, but there is not one nation, in fact individual that would not operate the same way.
We can follow the clear devastation the US foreign policy causes world-wide, the desperate deadlock in Europe as nations cannot move out of their own black boxes, the whole global world is on its knees because we are incapable understanding or implementing the principles necessary in a globally interdependent network.
In a living, natural, integral system each and every individual, nation has to put the well-being, prosperity, sustainability of the whole as priority.
Only when this primary goal is fulfilled can individual parts make individual calculations, although in an optimally working integral system that happens automatically, each and every part receiving 100% of what they need in order to give their 100% contribution for the whole.
Of course for this to happen we have to learn first of all and put into practice how integral systems operate, we need to adapt.
The present cancer cells have to learn to to mesh together forming a healthy and sustainable global body, otherwise we will not be able to build even our short term future.
Our common boat is sinking as all of us are busy drilling holes underneath the others not understanding that the whole boat will sink regardless.

Source: Wikepedia
#Khrushchev was born in the Russian village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the present-day border between Russia and Ukraine.

#Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family.

Note: I don't use Wikipedia, at my age. But I looked it up now. I know the Russian Revolution and Stalinist period.... and what Pravda and Isvestia wrote, at the time, about the above two members of Standing Committee of CPSU.

Today some 15 Million Russian-speaking Ukrainians live next to Russia in the East. For them western Ukrainians are like the Arabs call the *infidels* - i.e. pro-westerners.

The blame that Bildt seems to put on Russia seems to avoid the reality that the US and the EU were also pressuring Ukraine to align with them. The fault lies in each of them dealing with Ukraine in the context of their own strategic interests. If the US really wanted to leave Ukraine to the will of its own people it should not have been discussing how the future government of the nation should be made up. If the West also seriously looked at the situation they should have condemned the violent protesters that were provoking violence.

Yanukovich is a disgusting autocrat. That is a clear and plain fact, but it is also a fact that he has a significant amount of support and the events that have unfolded recently seem to reflect power existing in the streets from a group of protesters that are not representative of the whole nation. If peace is to be preserve reconciliation is needed. Ukraine does not need to a "European" nation or part of the Russian sphere it can, and I believe should, be independent of both. The problem is neither Russia or the west seems willing to accept this. Despite what the protesters say Ukrainians are not overwhelmingly united in a desire to move closer to Europe. In fact many of the violent protesters are just as disgusted with Europe as they are with Russia.

There is a credibility problem with EU principally because it didn't, at first, provide a more transparent path way to EU membership to Ukraine. And not until Polish, German and French FMs descended on Kiev did any crisis resolution process take place. So it took national politicians to deal with the crisis, to begin with, and find an interim resolution.

What does that tell us about EU Commission and its mammoth bureaucracy dealing with national security and foreign policy?

Now, it seems, Eastern Ukraine will attempt more or less go its own way...and may be link up with Russian Federation. Yanukovich disappeared early after signing the agreement...and who know he might eventually end up in Moscow - if not already there.

It might be useful to remember that both Grobachev and Khrushchev came originally from Ukraine. Kiev was always a citadel of old Czarist Russia and Soviet time. So EU and USA must be not be totally oblivious of historical links and Russian reaction to events in Ukraine.

Carl Bildt knows a lot more than what he's prepared to put into print right now.

Neither Gorbachev, nor Khrushchev were from Ukraine: the former is from Stavropol in Southern Russia, the latter is from Kursk (but spent his formative years in Yuzovka, now Donetsk).
Brezhnev, on the other hand, was born in Ukraine. Ironically, Russification of Ukraine reached its acme when he was in power.

Cultural and historical ties are present. However, very few people in the East support the idea of breaking away/joining Russia.

But is Europe in a position to start the search for solutions. For example, can Europe help sponsor the transitional, technocratic government of Ukraine so the collapse can be stopped and reforms begin?